Waste Not, Want Not

I am often dismayed that packages of cold cuts in our fridge go largely uneaten, or that food in the "crisper" (aka the "rotter") languish there until inedible. I feel guilty for the waste. Then there is the concern about best-before dates, which, bye the way, are often established to protect the manufacturer rather than reflecting the actual expiry. Not sure? Chuck it. Well, read this:

As much as half of all the food produced in the world – equivalent to two billion tonnes – ends up as waste every year, engineers warned in a report published on Thursday. The UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) blames the "staggering" new figures in its analysis on unnecessarily strict sell-by dates, buy-one-get-one free and Western consumer demand for cosmetically perfect food, along with "poor engineering and agricultural practices", inadequate infrastructure and poor storage facilities.

In the face of United Nations predictions that there could be about an extra 3 billion people to feed by the end of the century and growing pressure on the resources needed to produce food, including land, water and energy, the IMechE is calling for urgent action to tackle this waste.Their report, Global Food; Waste Not, Want Not, found that between 30% and 50% or 1.2-2bn tonnes of food produced around the world never makes it on to a plate.

In the UK as much as 30% of vegetable crops are not harvested due to their failure to meet retailers' exacting standards on physical appearance, it says, while up to half of the food that is bought in Europe and the US is thrown away by consumers. And about 550 billion cubic metres of water is wasted globally in growing crops that never reach the consumer. Carnivorous diets add extra pressure as it takes 20-50 times the amount of water to produce 1 kilogramme of meat than 1kg of vegetables; the demand for water in food production could reach 10–13 trillion cubic metres a year by 2050.

This is 2.5 to 3.5 times greater than the total human use of fresh water today and could lead to more dangerous water shortages around the world, the IMechE says, claiming that there is the potential to provide 60-100% more food by eliminating losses and waste while at the same time freeing up land, energy and water resources.

You know what this means? When my mom told me to eat everything on my plate, because it was wrong to waste food when kids were starving in India -- well, she was right.

I read recently that there is a research centre in California where they test food that has supposedly expired and in the majority of cases it is still safe to eat. They tested canned goods from a ship which sank in the 1930's and found it was still edible.

One of my New Year's resolutions was to try to actually eat when we have purchased. It seems to be the responsible and Christian thing to do.

Are you are as much of a culprit as we are? Did you have any idea we humans are so wasteful? Are you going to attempt to do better?